


speak the thing you could not utter

by carnival_papers



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-16
Updated: 2012-05-16
Packaged: 2017-11-05 13:51:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/407169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carnival_papers/pseuds/carnival_papers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He thought then, maybe, that if he were capable of loving, he would have almost certainly loved John in dangerous ways.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Sherlock can't sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	speak the thing you could not utter

**Author's Note:**

> this was the first fic i wrote for this fandom, but i'm still rather fond of it! title is from "seat beside me" by the head and the heart. enjoy.

When he closes his eyes, Sherlock becomes acutely, singularly aware of sound—more specifically,  _John’s_  sound: the hum of his breath, the rustle of his undershirt beneath blankets, the mumbling noises he murmurs in dreams. With his eyes closed, Sherlock can sense everything, able to tell that John’s shoulder is precisely nine centimeters away from his own shoulder and that John’s left hand is twitching, pulling the sheets just so.

Another war dream, Sherlock supposes, or maybe a nightmare. Their first night in the same bed had not been an easy one, what with John waking up at 2:37 in the morning shaking and whispering something about Jalalabad. Sherlock hadn’t known what to do, and John was shivering, pupils dilated.  _Bombs,_  he’d breathed,  _planes—_

Sherlock, always able to figure the core of the situation, found himself at a loss.   _John_.

And it was silly, really, because although they’d touched and kissed and shagged before, he was reluctant to touch John then, unsure how John would react, unsure if it was what  _people_  did. Sherlock could handle the sexual side of things—there was no doubt about that—but when it came to feelings, to waking up shivering in the middle of the night, he was less skilled.

John had reached for his hand and Sherlock had let him, he remembered that. There was the distinct feel of John’s fingers tightening around his palm, steady, squeezing and releasing and squeezing again. John drew his thumb across the heel of Sherlock’s hand, whispering a hesitant  _I’m sorry, this doesn’t usually happen_.

Which Sherlock knew, of course, was a lie. The flat’s walls were paper-thin and the stairs creaked, so he always heard John’s 3:00 AM trips to the kitchen for chamomile tea. Sometimes, there was a hurried, mumbled call to Sarah, the whispered  _I had that dream again_ , the tapping of laptop keys, the muffled sound of the  _adagio_  from Bruch’s first violin concerto.

But that first night in the upstairs bedroom— _John’s_  bedroom—had been different. No chamomile tea, no phone call, no violin concerto. There was only the dark and the silence and John’s fingers at two in the morning. Strange, Sherlock thought, how different it was.  _Are you—are you alright?_

John nodded, but kept his fingers wrapped around Sherlock’s hand, inhaling and exhaling until the pace of his breath returned to normal.

Sherlock is shaken from memory when he feels John turn over in bed, exhaling long and low. The room goes silent again after that, save for John’s breathing. Sherlock is left thinking, thinking, thinking, which is never good. He shifts his body, turning on his side, facing John’s back. John inhales every three seconds. The folds of his cotton undershirt are now four centimeters from the tips of Sherlock’s fingers. The skin beneath his shirt is four and a half centimeters away.

He remembers the sound of four and a half centimeters—once, it was a gunshot from the next building, the bullet whistling past him, the cabbie hitting the floor, the blood pounding in his ears. It hadn’t seemed real but the sound  _made_  it real, confirmed that a man was dead, confirmed that  _he_  wasn’t.

It was thrilling and terrifying all at once. Something about the sound of the name  _Moriarty_  echoing off the walls made him feel endlessly alive, even in the face of a dead man. His heart still thudded in his chest, but it was a reminder that he was still living—breathless, a little scared, but living nonetheless.

The sound of four and a half centimeters was, alternatively,  _John_ , the length of the space between their lips, the whisper of wind. The air smelled soap-sweet and clean, Sherlock remembers, and John’s fingers were at the lapels of Sherlock’s coat. “You saved my life,” he’d said, “you stupid man, you saved my life.”

It’s all blurred together now, and Sherlock can’t recall which incident of life-saving triggered it, but Sherlock distinctly remembers John smirking and pulling him down just a bit until the four and a half centimeters weren’t there anymore. The sound of  _close_ , of  _together_ , was a contended sigh that sounded something like  _us_.

Sherlock smiles a little at the thought of all that. John’s turned back over now and his hand is twitching again, six centimeters away. He brushes the knuckle of John’s thumb, flickering over it like flame, reminded of how gingerly he’d touched John’s scars when he’d first seen them. They were pale and nearly faded, but they crisscrossed his body, a map of memories and conflict etched into his flesh.

“This was an explosion at Musa Qala,” John had said, pressing Sherlock’s fingers against the jagged mark on his forearm. “And this,” he’d rolled up the cuffs of his trousers, “was a firefight at Lashkar Gah.”

John had flinched when Sherlock’s fingertips brushed his calf. Sherlock said nothing for a moment, simply feeling John beneath his hands, tracing the ridges of the sunflower-shaped scar. John twitched again.

“It’s, er—well, I’m mostly healed now—”

“Completely.”

“—but it still hurts sometimes.”

Sherlock left his fingers there at the scar’s center where a bullet had once been. “Psychosomatic. That’s what I’ve been telling you.” He glanced up. “Does it hurt now?”

John breathed. “No.”

For a while, he let Sherlock touch, curious, allowing Sherlock’s fingers to brush the marks that marred his body, unbuttoning his shirt and adjusting the sleeves so Sherlock could follow the old wounds across his elbow, to his bicep, to his shoulder. Sherlock recalls thinking  _John bled here and here and here; here it was deepest, here he bled for hours_. He remembers wondering how John must have hurt once and maybe he hurt still, but he didn’t hurt  _now_ ; he didn’t hurt beneath Sherlock’s slender, light fingers; his soft, strange lips; his long, thin body.

John’s eyes were closed, but he sensed Sherlock above him, slipping off the unbuttoned shirt and pausing for a moment before lowering his head to John’s chest. Sherlock pressed his ear just to the right of John’s sternum, listening to the thump of his heart beneath layers of skin and muscle and a cage of rib-bones. It was a little sound of life, persistent, steady at 72 beats per minute, the tempo of a man calm in the midst of the unknown—there was no fear, no uncertainty in John’s heartbeat, not like the tripping, speeding mess in Sherlock’s body that pounded out  _STOP NOW. STOP NOW. STOP RIGHT NOW._

But Sherlock had never been one for heeding instructions. He thought then, maybe, that if he were capable of loving, he would have almost certainly loved John in dangerous ways. He would have loved the steadiness of John’s hand on a gun; he would have loved the lingering taste of dirt and blood and mint tea in John’s mouth; he would have loved the very scars he had touched and felt, the first time he’d  _felt_ anything in a very long time. He would have loved all of John and he would have loved John dangerously, the only way he knew how.

Now, with his eyes closed, fingers against John’s scars again, Sherlock admits to himself that, at least in John’s case, he is capable of love or something like it, dangerous as it might be. John is stirring next to him, eyes fluttering open. “It’s two in the  _bloody_  morning, Sherlock,” he whispers, “what’re you doing?”

“I know so much about you—arguably, I know more about you than  _you_ do—everything, nearly—but I don’t know why you stay here –why you do this whole crime-solving bit—with  _me_.”

John sighs. “Because you’re a genius, life-saving, utter  _arse_  of a man. Now let me sleep.” He grumbles and shifts beneath the blankets, but Sherlock’s fingers tighten around John’s forearm.

“Your father was proud of you when you joined the military, but you never felt that same pride—you watched your friends die; you couldn’t save them.  _Unbreakable John Watson_. You couldn’t save them, John, and you didn’t. And you—someone hurt you, someone over there tried to break you. And they nearly did. You haven’t forgiven yourself for the things you saw, the things you did and the things you didn’t stop, and yet you killed a man for me, John; you came back after everything, and, moreover, you  _forgave_  me, when you’ve never even done that for yourself.” Sherlock pauses. “I’ve nearly killed you more than once and yet you’re here. You’ve never left.”

There’s a smile playing at the corners of John’s lips. “You’re strange and stupid—very,  _very_ stupid—but mostly you’re thrilling, Sherlock. Absolutely thrilling.”

Sherlock smirks and pulls John closer, murmuring kisses that sound like  _dangerous, dangerous us_  into John’s skin until the rain and the street sounds and the persistent beating of John’s pulse drown the words out.  _Dangerous_ , he kisses,  _dangerous._


End file.
